Rumsfeld Has Resigned

Staff: Mentor

The Don has gone.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Wednesday Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is stepping down and former CIA Director Robert Gates will take over at the Pentagon and in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

Gates is a good choice. Too bad it wasn't done sooner - like 3.5 years ago.

This the man fearless enough to go to war with one-fifth of an army, too courageous to heed dire warnings from his own generals, too tough to request extra armor for his soldiers. And he runs away from a few Democrats led by a woman. Makes you think.

Staff: Mentor

Analysis: The Defense Secretary was saved by the 9/11 attacks, but fell short in his effort to remake the military and overreached in Iraq

By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON

Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched to the political gallows Wednesday as swiftly and surprisingly as his arrival there, for a second tour, was nearly six years ago. A hard-nosed businessman, tough political infighter, and Dick Cheney's mentor, he was a good choice to retool a Pentagon that had grown fat and complacent since his last tour as Pentagon chief ended in the Ford administration.

While I agree the intent was correct, the execution stunk. Donny Boy blew it big time!

But he quickly stumbled in his stubborn effort to remake the Pentagon. He, and the Bush administration, failed to make the tough choices necessary to build a 21st century fighting force. Instead, they stuffed billions of dollars into 20th century weapons system that sprang from the drawing board when Russia was still the Soviet Union. As F-22 attack planes and Virginia-class submarines consumed the Pentagon's purse, there weren't enough soldiers to prevail in Iraq — and those dispatched lacked the necessary armor to do their jobs.

They lack sufficient body and vehicular armor to prevent injury and death. They did their jobs as best they could under the circumstances. The people in the Bush administration handicapped - ney abused - the military.

It's hard to recall it now, but Rumsfeld was on the ropes before the 9/11 attacks. His roughshod treatment of many in the military — fairly or unfairly — had many officers, especially in the Army, setting their bayonets into place by the middle of 2001. It was only the al-Qaeda attacks that saved Rumsfeld's job later that year, many Pentagon insiders believe. Overnight, he achieved pop-culture status, his stern countenance and parrying of press questions bringing him a peculiar kind of Washington fame in those scary weeks following 9/11. Yet it was the pair of wars launched in the wake of those terror strikes that, over time, highlighted on a far bigger stage his short-sighted and subordinate-ruffling demeanor.

Well it's Bush lack of concern and lack of inquistiveness, and probably delusional thinking that allowed Rumsfeld to stay on.

Don's needs to go home and enjoy his $ millions and five houses.

Meanwhile more than 2800 US troops aren't returning and thousands more return with injury and questionable support from the administration.

Gates is a good choice. Too bad it wasn't done sooner - like 3.5 years ago.

Why a person with CIA background instead of military? Intel is obviously more important than ever before, but we already have a Director of National Intelligence. Since we still need to resolve things in Iraq, I would have expected someone with more experience dealing with the military.

Why a person with CIA background instead of military? Intel is obviously more important than ever before, but we already have a Director of National Intelligence. Since we still need to resolve things in Iraq, I would have expected someone with more experience dealing with the military.

Good point. Naming Colin Powell to be Defense Secretary would have been a smarter move, and it would have given Powell an opportunity to redeem himself after feeding the UN lies regarding the non-existent Iraq WMD. Powell is popular enough that if a Democrat succeeds Bush, he would probably be kept on in the post, especially if it looks like he's doing a god job trying to clean up Rummy's mess.

It's kind of strange timing to announce Rumsfeld's resignation the day after the election. I thought that day was normally reserved for defeated candidates to accept a plea bargain in whatever scandal was dogging their campaign.

This the man fearless enough to go to war with one-fifth of an army, too courageous to heed dire warnings from his own generals, too tough to request extra armor for his soldiers. And he runs away from a few Democrats led by a woman. Makes you think.

Staff: Mentor

Analysis: If Bush had acted sooner, he might have helped the G.O.P. when it mattered. More importantly, by starting to change Iraq policy, he might have saved lives.

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

Give President Bush credit for being honest about his dishonesty. Last week he told reporters for the top wire news services — the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg — that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were doing fabulous work and would remain in their jobs as Defense Secretary and Vice President right up to the end of Bush's second term. Today at his post-election press conference the President more or less admitted he was lying, at least about Rumsfeld.

It's not a surprise that Rumsfeld finally resigned — to be replaced by former CIA chief Robert Gates. What is surprising is how long it took. Well before the Army Times and Marine Times called for his resignation — even before John McCain declared he had lost confidence in Rumsfeld — the brash Secretary of Defense had lost almost all his allies inside the White House. Just the mention of his name would cause aides to the President to grind their teeth and roll their eyes. He had become a liability to the President, and his advisers knew it and resented it. If the choice had been theirs', Rummy would have been shown the door months, if not years, ago. And that was the White House. Rumsfeld never had allies in the State Department.

After Bush declared his unbending support for Rumsfeld last week, it was telling how few aides and advisers to the President were willing to reaffirm what the President had said. When asked about Bush's Rumsfeld comments, one official didn't try to hide the pain the question caused him. He wouldn't talk about it. He and others made it clear that the President said "what he had to say." In other words, Bush's support for Rumsfeld would last only until the last polling station closed on Tuesday night.

Since it came just minutes after Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi called for new civilian leadership at the Pentagon, the announcement of Rumsfeld's firing might be seen as an act of political expediency, a sacrificial offering to the newly powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill.
. . . .

The criticism is coming fast and furious.

Some background on Robert Gates:

Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is an American intelligence official, currently nominated by President George W. Bush for the position of United States Secretary of Defense. Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Director of Central Intelligence. After leaving the CIA, he wrote his memoirs and became president of Texas A&M University, serving on several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the bipartisan commission headed by James A. Baker III, the Iraq Study Group, that has been studying the Iraq campaign.

It's kind of strange timing to announce Rumsfeld's resignation the day after the election. I thought that day was normally reserved for defeated candidates to accept a plea bargain in whatever scandal was dogging their campaign.

Well, it was likely planned if the dems won as both red meat, and to avoid the sec of defense being on trial. There will be subpoenas.

Well, it was likely planned if the dems won as both red meat, and to avoid the sec of defense being on trial. There will be subpoenas.

Not until the new Congress takes office in January.

I would have expected them to wait at least until next week. The whole day looks like 'the surrender'. Rumsfeld's resignation. Hastert announcing he won't run for minority leader. The house is being cleaned immediately.

In choosing Robert M. Gates as his next defense secretary, President Bush reached back to an earlier era in Republican foreign policy, one marked more by caution and pragmatism than that of the neoconservatives who have shaped the Bush administration's war in Iraq and confrontations with Iran and North Korea.

Soft-spoken but tough-minded, Mr. Gates, 63, is in many ways the antithesis of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brash leader he would replace. He has been privately critical of the administration's failure to execute its military and political plans for Iraq, and he has spent the last six months quietly debating new approaches to the war, as a member of the Iraq Study Group run by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball said:

By choosing Robert Gates as his new Defense secretary, President George W. Bush is once again turning to a trusted warhorse from his father's administration. But the Gates nomination also could remind the new Democratic Congress about controversies from the George H.W. Bush era as well.

Gates was investigated during the late 1980s and 1990s by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh over whether Gates had told the truth about the Iran-contra affair, which occurred during his tenure as deputy to Ronald Reagan's CIA director, William Casey. . . .

Gates was again nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be CIA chief in 1991, setting off an intense and spirited confirmation hearing. . . . Gates also was publicly accused by former CIA subordinates of slanting intelligence about the Soviet threat -- a criticism that evokes an eerie parallel to accusations hurled against the current Bush administration over its handling of pre-war intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to Al Qaeda.

Some good comments about his past and some bad. Considering his work on the Iraq Study Group with another pragmatist from Bush 41's staff, hopefully Shane's comments are more relevant to today.

Staff: Mentor

He has been privately critical of the administration's failure to execute its military and political plans for Iraq, and he has spent the last six months quietly debating new approaches to the war, as a member of the Iraq Study Group run by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.

The second paragraph is quite relevant. I am counting on Gates listening to the military. Texas A&M has a largely ROTC program (Corps of Cadets), and I expect that to be a positive influence on Gates.

I suppose I can admit that I wouldn't know how to vote for, so I can kind of see why it's a representative decision, but is there more to it?

The President picks his own cabinet members and then your representatives in Congress get to vet them, so you (theoretically) do have a say in their confirmation if you can accurately predict what your scum-sucking son of a b... er, Congressional representative is going to do when confronted by a very bad nominee. In practice, there is very little advise-and-consent going on at this level.